The perpetrator, Agus Sujatno, was a member of the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) terrorist organisation. Police find messages against the recently adopted Indonesian criminal code approved.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) - A suicide bomber blew himself up this morning inside the Astanaanyar police station, Bandung (West Java province), killing one policeman and wounding 10 other people.
The bomber was identified as Agus Sujatno, aka Agus Muslim, who was arrested in 2017 after setting off a pressure bomb in the courtyard of a government office in Bandung without causing casualties.
At the time he was tried and sentenced to four years in a maximum security prison on the island of Nusakambangan. He was released in October 2021.
Agus was “affiliated with the JAD Bandung or JAD West Java," said National Police Chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo at a press conference.
JAD stands for Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, Indonesia’s main terrorist group, which has federated scores of smaller groups and has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group in 2015.
The police chief added that the attacker had brought two bombs to the scene of the attack, but only one was detonated.
This morning, police also seized a motorcycle sporting a sticker with the IS flag and a message against Indonesia’s new criminal code, described as the work of infidels.
Indonesian terrorists reject the laws of modern states, and want to impose Islamic law on the entire country.
JAD is responsible for several bombings in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, including suicide attacks against Catholic churches in Makassar (South Sulawesi) in March 2021 and Surabaya (East Java) in 2018.
Between 2011 and 2019, it repeatedly targeted police stations and law enforcement agencies.